US Attorney General John Ashcroft announced yesterday that he will not honor an assurance made to the Canadian government last week by the US Ambassador to Canada, Paul Cellucci, that Canadian citizens will be treated uniformly in immigration matters regardless of their country of birth.

Ashcroft implied that the US Ambassador, who reports to the US Department of State, did not have the legal standing to make a promise on behalf of the US Department of Justice who oversees the Immigration and Naturalization service.

These comments follow the statement made by the US Embassy on November 1 that the United States (has) changed the treatment accorded to those individuals who... are Canadian citizens. As a result of that statement, Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham withdrew the travel advisory that cautioned Canadian citizens visiting the United States.

Natural Resources Minister Herb Dhaliwal, himself an immigrant Canadian of Indian origin, expressed outrage at the second change in policy this week, calling it "a backward move... against fundamental human rights." Foreign Minister Graham said that he was "asking clarifications about the specific comment of Mr. Ashcroft".

The United States you desperately want back (if it ever existed) is gone. It is N O T O U R F A U L T. These measures are here, and they are unfair, and they are outrageous and however wrong they are is 1/one billionth as wrong as the next "terror event" that history screams at us will be carried out by individuals of a specific persuasion, color and heritage.

Get used to it. Come & visit.
Scream about how wrong it is....don't come & visit.

What the U.S. is doing is against fundamental human rights? People are complaining about what we're doing to protect our country when there are other countries who don't have a shred of a decent human rights record? Unbelievable. And this is coming from a country who doesn't recognize Hezbollah as a terrorist organization

Good for Ashcroft.It's about time someone has the balls to stand up against a country that we're reputed to be friends with,but acts in quite a different matter. Well, I better get ready for the petty and childish flaming now.

Again, the real issue here is not the NSEERS system, which I have gone on the record multiple times as having said that I support. The issue here is the total lack of direction and communication being shown by the different branches of the US Government.

I think those Canadians who feel that the US will treat them unfairly have a legitimate reason to think so, but they can protest by simply staying home in Canada and not travelling to or through the US. No one is forcing them to go to the US, and no one is persecuting them in Canada. Problem solved.

However, when one member of the US Government makes a promise that something will happen, and another one immediately contradicts him, that is a disturbing concern. How are Canadians supposed to abide by the US rules when the US themselves don't know what the rules are?

That is the point I am trying to make, and continual flaming of the Canadians for objecting to NSEERS is simply preaching to the choir.

What this lets some of our idiotic INS officers do is exercise every racist phobia they may have against any person of color irrespective of whether they may have cause to be suspicious. In the past year, they have targeted perfectly secular, liberal Indian actors and writers (who aren't even Muslim) to the worst abuses at ports of entry based on some vague phsiological similarity to people of middle eastern descent. And while it may mean nothing to you as a white American, I, as an American of Indian descent, am rather nauseated that those who look like me are being subjected to the most vicious racist assumptions based on absolutely no probable cause at all. And, frankly, I would expect my fellow Americans of all colors and creeds to be just as outraged. What's more, these are not isolated incidents. And lets not compare ourselves in this country to those tinpot fundamentalist states where human rights are perfectly absent. Racial profiling in this country is perfectly legal, when there is probable cause, and when there is a suspicion that individuals may have connections to terrorist organizations; racism trumpeted in the name of national security is not. Is there a reason to suspect a Libyan national entering the US? Perhaps. Is there a reason to treat a young Canadian ivy league student of Pakistani descent to a demeaning strip search at immigrations just because she was born within 2000 miles of Mecca? No. You do not have a connection to a terrorist organization, de facto, by virtue of a heightened level of melanin in your skin, or because your non-Christian name may be unpronounceable to some zagnut in an INS uniform. If such a blanket policy is adopted, where do we go next? National pogroms against fellow Americans?

Did Celluci have the authority to make such a promise to Canada though after the first incident? I would think that perhaps he should be reprimanded for complicating a issue further than it had to be,unless he initially acted per a higher order.

Did Celluci have the authority to make such a promise to Canada though after the first incident?

The AMBASSADOR of the US Government to Canada is considered to have authority to speak for the United States on all matters. This was not some low level bureaucrat speaking. This was the highest ranking US official in Canada who not only made a verbal statement, but also put it in writing to the Canadian government along with an apology from the United States for deporting a Canadian citizen to Syria. So yes, he had the authority, of that there is no doubt.

Most of my opinion on the issue is based on the fact that I lived in a border state for many of the years I passed to and from , in the interest of harmony, free trade and fear of a pit bull civil rights lawyer looking to get rich, security on the border to Canada was laughable.

Actually, going to be entering within the next year or so B747-437B. I'm applying for Fall2003 entrance in Management. I just moved here last week,and I'm certainly waiting till I can get the in-state tuition.

You are definitely correct B747-437B.Numerous agencies really NEED to look at themselves in the mirror closer.

The issue here is the total lack of direction and communication being shown by the different branches of the US Government.

No, this is not the issue. The issue is that 3000 Americans were slaughtered on 9-11 by 19 Middle Easterners.

I'm Canadian and I can tell you all that MOST CANADIANS support the tougher immigration stance of the US. Less than 1% of Canadians are of Middle East origin and hence 99%+ Canadians will not be affected one iota by the tougher US stance.

B747-237B....your anger is mis-directed....you need to focus on the 19 Middle Eastern killers.....not the American reaction.

we need to take siginicant but reasonable steps to protect what our way of life

I absolutely agree, but what constitutes "reasonable"? The NSEERS program is a very effective way to track potentially hazardous entrants, but unfortunately the US still isn't able to decide what constitutes one. Is it a Canadian citizen born in Sudan? Fine. Then say so. Don't say that you will be exempt from something, and then turn around 3 days later and say "Yes, I said that but I didn't mean it". That's not reasonable by any stretch of imagination.

If the US Government truly felt that there was a significant risk from Canadian citizens born in those 5 countries (as Yyz717 correctly points out, they comprise only 47,000 people which is actually 0.14% of the population) then they should not have made a statement exempting them from the NSEERS system in the first place. Stand firm and say that "THIS IS OUR POLICY AND DEAL WITH IT". Canada can howl and kick and scream, but they don't have a leg to stand on. However, issuing conflicting statements on a weekly basis is hardly a move to inspire confidence, and gives Canadians a legitimate basis upon which to base any further ill-feeling.

your anger is mis-directed....you need to focus on the 19 Middle Eastern killers.....not the American reaction

I think you are misconstruing my criticism for anger. I went to school in the US and lived there for 7 years. I worked at a police department there for 3 years and put my life on the line to defend the rights of the citizens that the US constitution guaranteed. I believed in the American system because it worked for the most part. That is why I find it extemely sad today to find that the United States is essentially making itself the laughing stock of the world with its implementation of half-baked policies that even they don't know about. I don't have a problem with the US and its right to develop policies to protect itself, whether that means excluding all potential terrorists, or tracking them, or sending them back home. I do have a problem with their poor implementation of these policies which does absolutely nothing to further security, and simply serves to antagonize and punish the innocent.